About 10 months ago Mike Metzger flew from Clapham Institute in Annapolis to spend a day with us in Austin.

“You meet 4 kinds of people on the ocean of life,” Mike said.

“Those who drift just go with the flow. The wind and the waves control their speed and direction. The drifter quietly floats along and says, ‘Whatever.’”

“Those who surf are always riding a wave, the next big thing. They stay excited until the wave fades away, then they scan the horizon for something new. Surfers don’t usually get anywhere, but they make a lot of noise and put on a good show.”

“Those who drown seem to stay in the center of a storm. It doesn’t matter how often you rescue them, they’ll soon be in another crisis, crying, ‘Help me, save me, it’s been the worst week of my life. I don’t know what I’m going to do.’”

“Those who sail are navigating toward a fixed point. They counteract the wind and waves by adjusting the rudder and shifting the sails to stay on course. But without an immovable, fixed point in your life, there can be no sailing. There’s nothing for you but drift, surf or drown.”

Can you name the fixed point in your life, your immovable object? 

by Charlie Munger

(While giving a speech on “The Psychology of Human Mid-Judgement” and talking about gambling and compulsions…)

For instance, a lottery.

• You have a lottery where you get your number by lot, and then somebody draws a number by lot, it gets lousy play.
• You have a lottery where people get to pick their number, you get big play.

It’s this consistency and commitment thing. People think if they have committed to it, it has to be good. The minute they’ve picked it themselves it gets an extra validity. After all, they thought it and they acted o­n it.

(photo by midweekpost @ Flickr.com)

One of the earliest case studies that starkly highlights the effects of high and low expectations involves a punch card machine. For the 1890 census, the U.S. Census Bureau automated its census tabulation by using a punch card machine invented by a mechanical engineer named Herman Hollerith.

The machine resembled a typewriter, and operators had to be specially trained. Hollerith estimated that a skilled operator could process 550 cards per day. Sure enough, when workers were trained, they punched 550 cards per day with two weeks’ experience. Some managed 700, but they complained that it was a strain to work that fast.

The next group of operators was trained by people who had no knowledge of Hollerith’s prediction. These operators weren’t told anything about the first group’s production. Before long, they were processing 2,100 cards a day without breaking a sweat.

This is a case in which artificially low expectations were communicated to one group of trainees but not to another. The machines didn’t change, the training methodology didn’t change, nor were the later trainees any smarter or more adept than the early trainees. The only thing that changed was expectations. Lower expectations produced lower results, and higher expectations produced higher results.

- by Tom Connellan

Action Summary:

• “Its not desire, but expectations that move the world.”
• Have high expectations from others as well as yourself and you’ll witness greatness.

(photo by roland @ Flickr.com)

In order to be happy, you must be successful in all three of these areas:

1. Relationships
2. Health
3. Income

THIS I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:–
There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;
And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged
A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords
Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince’s banner
Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.

A craven hung along the battle’s edge,
And thought, “Had I a sword of keener steel–
That blue blade that the king’s son bears, — but this
Blunt thing–!” he snapped and flung it from his hand,
And lowering crept away and left the field.

Then came the king’s son, wounded, sore bestead,
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,
Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,
And ran and snatched it, and with battle shout
Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down,
And saved a great cause that heroic day.

- by Edward Rowland Sill (1841-1887)

Action Summary:

• “Do what you can,
• with what you have,
• where you are.”
• - Theodore Roosevelt

(Photo by el7bara @ Flickr.com)

This change led to a unique opportunity for psychologists.  A team in University of Maryland decided to compare health histories of people born in the last three months of 1916 with people who were born in the first three months of 1917.  There were roughly a quarter of a million people in each group of people.

What they found surprised the psychologists.  Up to age 65, the death rates in both the groups of people was about the same.  But from age 65 to 70, the death rate in the group that received lower social security benefits was 2% lower than the other group.

On average, people who received lower benefits lived longer!

On further probing, the research team found that because of lower benefits, people born after January 2, 1917 remained in the workforce for a longer duration – even after crossing the retirement age of 65.

And the longer they remained in the workforce, the longer they lived!

“The Door that is not used by people rusts before the door that is used everyday” 

Time and again, nature shows that without purpose and movement, the entity dies.

The whole school of Feng Shui rose from this observation: moving energy extends life.

(Feng Shui believes that water stops the flow of energy while wind promotes it.  And so they arrange furniture in a way that optimizes the flow of energy while maintaining harmony with the surroundings.  Does it really work?  There is no way to test it.)

Anyways…

Action Summary:

• Have a purpose in life
• When you meet one goal, immediately start chasing another
• Create challenges in your life and business
• If you want to kill a skill, don’t practise it

What is the secret to happiness?

Scientists have found the answer.

Four of them, in fact.

It appears, apparently, that modern science has figured it all out. When it comes to happiness, here’s the four-part formula that makes it happen.

1.

First, say researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, is family and friends. As much as you can muster. How so? Sure, you might quibble, you might bicker, you might even end the night thumping each other with drumsticks.

But guess what. “The happiest people,” says a USA Today article reporting the U. of P. data, “spend the least time alone.”

So there’s your first lesson. This holiday, pick up the phone and call a long lost friend. Or at least call your mother.

2.

The second key, says Ed Diener, is to put away your yardstick. Specifically, avoid the trap of using “stuff” to measure your success.

That doesn’t mean you can’t cherish a few items. I love my Martin. I love my Fender. And my laptop and I, we’ve got a relationship that borders on “gone too far.” What it does mean, however, is that a life focusing on getting ever better “stuff” — and only that — can only end in tears.

3.

Third, says the same USA Today article, is the secret of having “flow” in your life. That’s how Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihali describes the continuous act of pursuing — and getting lost in — your talents. “People,” he says, “feel best when doing what they do best.”

4.

Last, and this is possibly the most successful way to find happiness, says research from University of Michigan psychologist Chris Peterson, is the combined virtues of gratitude and forgiveness.

How so? Just saying thanks and meaning it can boost your mood, many fold. Gratitude doesn’t just make the recipient feel good. It has a way of reminding you what’s going right for you, as well.

Acts of forgiveness, though, might even have a stronger impact. “Forgiveness is the trait most strongly linked to happiness,” says Peterson, “It’s the queen of all virtues and probably the hardest to come by.”

So there you have it.

The secrets to eternal happiness.

Family and friends. Work that you love. Freedom from stuff. And most of all, gratitude toward what you’ve got… and forgiveness for those things, for whatever reason, from which you feel you’ve been denied.

“We’re all told that variety is the spice of life. But variety is not just over-rated, it may actually have a cost. Research shows that people do tend to seek more variety than they should. We all think we should try a different doughnut every time we go to the shop, but the fact is that people are measurably happier when they have their favorite on every visit — provided the visits are sufficiently separated in time.

Those last four words are the important ones. If you had to eat 4 donuts in rapid succession, variety would indeed spice up your experience and you’d be wise to seek it. But if you had to eat 4 donuts on 4 separate Mondays, variety would lower your overall enjoyment.

The human brain has tremendous difficulty reasoning about time, and thus we tend to seek variety whether the doughnuts are separated by minutes or months.”

- Daniel Gilbert

Read the last statement again and you’ll realize why we hate routine but crave habits!

From the New York Times

“You probably know the parable of the ant and the grasshopper. The ant is wise, industriously working to stock food for the winter. The grasshopper is foolish, gamboling in the sun, only to find himself starving and cold when the blizzard comes. The moral? Resist the temptations of daily pleasure, and you’ll be happier in the long run.

But what if that’s wrong?

• Kivetz interviewed 63 subjects and asked half of them to recall a time in the previous week when they had to choose between work or pleasure — and then to rank how they felt about their decision on a scale from “no regret at all” to “a lot of regret.”

• Then Kivetz asked the other half to do the same for a similar decision five years in the past.

• When the moment in question was a week before, those who worked industriously reported that they were glad they had. Those who partied said they regretted it.

• But when the subjects considered the decision from five years in the past, the propositions reversed: those who toiled regretted it; those who relaxed were happy with their choice.

What should you do?

If you don’t toil now, you’ll regret tomorrow. But if you don’t have fun now, you’ll regret day after! What should you do? How can you have no regrets?

The solution is simple to state but hard to implement:

Screw
the Deadlines!

To quote one of my favourite authors:

“Have you allowed the
merely urgent to replace
the truly important?”
- Roy H. Williams

If you glance through your to-do lists, you’ll find that its full of things that are verrry urgent but aren’t too important.

• Focus on taking care of the truly important things.
• And then go have some fun instead of toiling over the boring urgent things.

That is how you find balance and have zero regrets.

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